A FEW YEARS AGO
TWO lungs like butterfly wings flapping. They fill with air from a scream sucked in, turned sideways—the wings rip, ribs clip, punctured deep into a body left convulsing over a steering wheel. Butterfly clips cling to matted clumps of hair.
That couldn’t be right.
She wore those clips in fourth grade, was it fifth? Jason would know. He’d comb her hair before the school bus came, pulling it through her tangled curls. He was the chosen one. She yelped whenever I did it, but with him, she twinkle smiled to her eyes. But one day, she patted his hand back, the one that held a cluster of butterflies, and solemnly shook her head. I silently, jealously, watched from the doorway. Jason released the clips and they landed on the cold tile and scattered.
The doctor staring at me now wanted me to listen.
“She died on impact.” And then there was more about the condition of her body, details filling up dead air. Cold and clinical facts that Jason clung to—I turned away.
Jason asked questions.
The doctor answered: “Head on collision… lungs… sternum… heart… took the brunt.” I pictured it; her beating heart trapped between two collapsing organs.
Thump, thump, thump.
Jason wanted to wind back the clock. He wouldn’t have left like he did, right then, and she wouldn’t have gotten in the car to follow like she did, right after. As if the order of operations could be reversed and instead he could slip into the passenger seat beside her. In this fantasy, I waved goodbye from the doorway and watched them as if nothing had happened, my tear-stained cheeks drying in the balmy air of July. In this fantasy, there’s no rain. Drive safe, I’d say smiling in this alternate universe.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it all unfolded.
“Claire? Claire?”
The doctor’s hands were on my upper arms, holding me upright. Bright hospital lights, I sensed my body shifting. I wanted to join her. I wouldn’t float up to heaven, I would slide down to the basement where her cold body lay on an even colder metal sheet.
“I can’t see her,” I said.
Jason’s hair was unruly, curly like hers, and his eyes wild.
“I will,” he said.
I felt rage rising again. I had to shake myself from the doctor’s grip. Rage so bright, you see, rage of a mother no longer, of a wife no longer. Anger that seeps backward—like liquid plaster, binding together every day, every hour, every minute of the past, cemented into a great big ball of resentment and loneliness. I was at the doorway again, looking on as he slid the comb through her hair.
My husband whispered something to the doctors and nurses. The peering passersby bird faces stared on.
Give us space.
“You did this,” I said to him.
We were perfect. Then it cracked. Over and over again, a million shards. It’s your fault, Jason. When I pulled my head back, his mouth was moving. But I couldn’t hear his voice anymore. I only heard his heart beating.
My husband’s wonderful heart, the kind of heart that makes you want to squeeze so hard the capillaries burst and the veins rupture, leaving you with blood-soaked hands. But it was a mistake, you would tell everyone, you didn’t mean to do it. It was just that kind of love.